They were ordained priests at Venice, and then they scattered over Northern Italy, to allow a year's grace to the Palestinian mission and let other cities see their ways. Bologna, Ferrara, Siena, and Padua--all university towns--now witnessed the strange labours of the nameless knights of Christ. The years were not far distant when men would start with suspicion at the coming of a "Jesuit" and wonder what dark intrigue brought him amongst them, but in those early days they seemed the plainest and most guileless of ministers. Two soberly dressed, barefooted youths, their pale faces warmed by the smile which the master bade them wear under the eyes of men, would enter the gate one evening, covered with the dust of long roads, and mount some stone in the busy street or square; and, when men and women gathered round to see the tricks of these foreign jugglers or tumblers, they would be startled to hear such fiery preaching as had not been heard in Italy since the fresh spring-time of the followers of Francis and Dominic. Then the preachers would beg a crust of bread and a cup of water, and ask for the hospital, where they might serve the sick. They had no name, the inquirer learned, and belonged to no monastic body; they were simple knights-errant in the cause of Christ and the poor. The one feature by which they might, to some close observer, have given an inkling of the future was that they hung about the universities and impressed youths with their learning; or that, while they served the poor, they were pleased to direct the consciences of noble and wealthy women. Yet who would suppose that within twenty years these men would be intriguing for the control of the universities and shaping the counsels of kings? Ignatius, Favre, and Lainez went to Vicenza, and found a lodging in a ruined monastery near the town. From this they went out daily to beg, and tend the sick, and startle townsfolk and villagers with explosive exhortations, in broken Italian, to lay aside their sins. Again the Inquisition summoned them, and dismissed them. At last, when it was clear that the road to the East was indefinitely closed, Ignatius called his followers from their several towns, and a council was held in the old convent. The events of these early days are known to us only from Jesuit writers of the next generation, and, discarding only the miracles with which they unnecessarily adorn the ways of their founders, we may follow them with little reserve. These men were, beyond question, in deadly earnest, though we shall see that some of them sheltered little human frailties under their hair-shirts. But it is quite plain that, however high and pure their aim was, they formed and carried their plans with a diplomacy, almost an astuteness, of which you will not find a trace in the founding of any other monastic body. One monastic virtue is conspicuously absent from the aureole of St. Ignatius--holy simplicity.